As is well known in the irrigation art, in maintaining a landscape sprinkling system or installing a new system, the operator is required to either install irrigation components or to remove or replace the components that make up the plumbing system for flowing water while they are mounted beneath the surface of the ground or in difficult places to work on. Hence, the operator, for example, after digging beneath the surface of the earth, is required to make a connection between the fittings and the fluid conveying systems that typically include plastic tubing (sometimes referred to as pipe or PVC pipe or funny hose or flexible PVC Pipe). Typically, the installation of the in-ground sprinkler system is done by hand where the operator encounters numerous designs of barbed fittings that make up a plumbing system for connecting the sprinklers to the plastic pipes or hoses. For example, these fittings include barbed funny pipe, T-connector fittings, male and female elbow fittings, barbed male and female adapter hose couplings, hose connectors, fittings directly connecting the sprinkler, hose-to-hose fittings etc. Without a tool, the operator through brute force forces the end of the hose onto the barb of the fitting. It isn't difficult to see that this is a tiring and time consuming operation particularly where there are numerous fittings that need to be connected.
Also well known in the water sprinkler technology, the installation typically requires many operations that the installer must perform in addition to installing the hose or PVC pipes to various types and sizes of fittings, which include amongst others, the cutting of the hose or PVC pipe and removing the hose from the fitting. Typically, the installer must carry separate tools to accomplish these operations. In accordance with this invention, not only does the tool of this invention provide ease for installing the hose, it also allows the operator to adapt the tool to be used on different size fittings and at different angles below and above the ground surface, it allows the operator to remove the hose or PVC pipe from a fitting and has a hose cutting feature as will be more fully described herein below.
In a complex in-ground sprinkler system it is typical to components made from various materials such as fittings that serve to connect the pipes to the sprinklers, to the water source and pipes to pipes. As is well known some of the materials used for these parts are made from commercially available plastic material which is relatively rigid and hard. Obviously, the resilience and toughness of the pipe and the dimensions of their inner and outer diameters play a paramount role in how easy or hard it is to install the pipe to the fitting or the fitting to the pipe, etc. As mentioned above, this invention addresses the insertion problem by providing a tool with a predetermined mechanical advantage that enables the installer to install the hose onto the barbed fitting with relative ease. In heretofore known installations, the installer would use a lubricant on the end of the hose to assist in the insertion of the hose to the fitting. The tool of this invention, as will be described in detail herein below, serves to alleviate the difficult tasks of inserting commercially available barbed fittings onto their commercially available pipes or hoses, Not only is this inventive tool capable of making installations beneath the surface of the ground and above ground, it can be employed for other applications, as for soda dispensers and the like. It is well known that the installation of these components requires that a lubrication be applied to end of the component being inserted. An advantage of the present invention is that there is no need to apply such lubrication.
There are a number of tools that are designed for the purpose of inserting the hose onto their fittings that are disclosed in the literature. As for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,658,711 granted to Benson on Dec. 9, 2003 describes an insertion tool that releaseably supports a hose and a pistol type of translating device urges the hose onto the fitting. Several disadvantages are noted with this particular tool. First, the insertion of the hose to the fitting can only be done above the ground and hence, does not allow the insertion of the hose where the fitting and/or hose are buried beneath the surface of the earth as is the case in installed water sprinkler systems. Second, the hose is moved onto the fitting and this has the propensity of allowing the flexible hose to bend and hence, interfere with the installation procedure. And, third, the method of holding the fitting in place is either by frictional fit to a flat plate or as suggested, but not described, by a conical shape that would protrude into a hollow fitting. While not limited thereto, the present invention allows the installation of a barbed fitting, elbow or adapter to a hose when in the ground, inserts the fitting into the channel of the hose while it is supported by this inventive tool so that the hose cannot bend when the tool is being deployed. Unlike the referenced patent, the present invention doesn't require a soap or alcohol lubricant to start the installation process. As will be described below, the present invention is characterized by having a relatively large mechanical advantage, facilitating the installation of the hose or PVC pipe to the fitting.
Another patent that describes an insertion tool for inserting a fitting into a hose is U.S. Pat. No. 5,979,032 that uses a grip-vise type of hose holder and a pivoting arm that includes a semi-spherical fitting holder that is aligned with the grip-vise hose holder at one position for inserting the fitting into the hose. The pivotal motion used to translate the fitting into the hose has been found to be an undesirable action for a tool that is adapted to insert a fitting into a flexible hose since the motion is arc like as opposed to being axial. Like the structure in the '711 patent, supra, this tool cannot accommodate an insertion of the fitting to the hose when the fitting and/or hose is beneath the surface of the ground. And furthermore, the structure of the '032 patent is limited to barbed adapter fittings.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,381 granted to Kish on Oct. 11, 1983 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,075,945 granted to Yeargin on Dec. 31, 1991 are other examples of tools that are used to insert hoses onto fittings and are mentioned here because they are used for other environments other than water sprinkler systems and cannot be adapted for in-ground insertion of the hose to fitting or vice versa. In contrast, the present invention, not only has the ability to allow the insertion of fittings to hoses, it can also be used for other environments, as for example inserting the hoses into soda and beer dispensers and the like.
Not only the heretofore known tools deficient in the mechanical advantage exhibited by the present invention, they have the disadvantage of not being capable of handling more than one size and or one type of fitting, nor can they be utilized when the fitting is in the ground. Additionally, the prior art type of insertion tool requires a number of other types of tools to provide the operations that are necessary for the installer, in contrast to the present invention which can be done with the use of single tool of the present invention.